Water Bugs and Rabbit Holes
by Phoebonica
Summary: Being together doesn't solve everything. Kit and Lemony talk, in the ruins of the Hotel.


**Disclaimer:** Daniel Handler owns ASOUE, first off. As for the rest... Lemony's singing "All My Little Words" by The Magnetic Fields. The waterbugs and dragonflies story is originally by Doris Stickney, and if you don't know what the quote at the end is from you are terribly underinformed about classic children's literature.

In my head this is a couple of days after Scenes From The Last Safe Place, but it's pretty self-contained as it is. This turned out longer than I expected, and it had about five different endings before I actually finished it. And I still think it's a bit too much like Someone Watching, but oh well.

**Water Bugs and Rabbit Holes**

Kit emerged from the ashes. They had actually cleared a space around the trapdoor, to avoid being showered with dust and bits of burned hotel every time they opened it, but she still always felt she was rising from the wreckage like a rather bedraggled phoenix. She rubbed her eyes, blinking in the sudden light – at this time of day and from this angle the sun flashed bright white off the surface of the pond, almost blinding her when she looked directly at it. Shielding her face with her hand, she scanned the edge of the water.

Lemony was sitting on the opposite bank, apparently staring in fascination at the back of his left hand. He didn't look up as Kit approached him. "_There_ you are," she said loudly. "I've been looking everywhere."

No response. She could hear him humming to himself, a tune she vaguely recognised – _not if I could sing like a bird, not for all North Carolina_… Coming up behind him, she saw what it was on his hand. A dragonfly, iridescent green and sparkling, wings fluttering in the breeze.

"Lemony?"

He jumped, startled, and the dragonfly took off. "Oh!" He looked up at her, blinking. "Kit. I – I didn't hear you."

"Sorry."

"Oh, no, it's all right." He shrugged. "It would have flown anyway. Eventually."

She sat down in the grass beside him. It was growing back now, short and prickly under her hand. "It's a good sign," she said. "The insects coming back, I mean. The currents must have carried most of the ash away by now."

"In to the ocean," Lemony said, looking down the slope of the bank at their reflections in the water. "And then the water evaporates, the rain falls, and –" he sighed and lay back in the grass, closing his eyes – "the whole thing starts again."

Kit frowned down at him. "Are you all right?"

He opened one eye, squinting up at her. "I'm fine. No different from usual."

"Hrmm." She put the palm of her hand against his forehead, as if checking his temperature. "You're sure?"

"I'm sure."

"Because you know if there's anything you want to…"

"Do you remember that story Great-Aunt Alexandria told us?" Lemony asked, sitting up again suddenly.

"You mean the one where she was on that dig in Mexico, and there was that pit full of…"

"No, not that one. I mean the one about the dragonflies."

"Dragonflies…" Kit thought for a moment. "Oh, yes! There were some tiny little water bugs at the bottom of a pond, and every so often one of them would climb up a reed and disappear. So they made a pact that the next one to climb would come back and tell them all what was up there. But when he did, he found he'd turned into a dragonfly, and he couldn't go into the water any more, and…"

"And that's what it's like when people die," Lemony finished. He looked down at the grass, running his fingers through it absently. "They change and go somewhere else, and we can't see them any more."

"Mm." Kit shrugged. "To be honest, at that age I was more interested in the natural history aspects of the whole thing."

"Me too." He paused, then spoke rapidly, still looking away. "In fact, that afternoon I went down to the lake…"

"By _yourself_?" Kit interrupted. "You know we weren't allowed to do that."

Lemony raised his eyebrows. "This happened when I was three, Kit. Obviously I survived."

"Even so! That's the one thing Mom and Dad absolutely _forbade_ us to do. Well, apart from reading in the car, but that was just because you got so travel sick when…" She broke off. "Sorry, you go ahead."

"_Anyway_. I went down to the lake. I knew I'd seen water bugs like those before, and – well, there were always dragonflies. I wanted to see the change. So I got the old fishing net, and I found a little group of them and fished them out. And…" He took a deep breath, shaking his head. "And then, I put them on a rock in the sun, to dry."

"Oh." Kit winced. "You mean…"

"They died," Lemony said flatly. "They didn't turn into anything beautiful. They just struggled and twitched and died."

His voice was steady, but his hands clenched at his sides, pulling up blades of grass. Kit touched his arm. "That's not your fault," she said. "You weren't to know. You didn't mean any harm."

"Oh, I know that," he said, in a casual tone that didn't fit beside the tension in his arm and the paleness of his face and the way he kept on looking straight ahead. "I haven't even thought about it in years. It was just something I remembered today, that's all. With the dragonflies, and… and everything…"

He shivered suddenly, biting his lip and squeezing his eyes closed as though he was in pain, as if he'd been stung. Kit wrapped her arms around his shoulders and tried to pull him to her but he pushed her away, crawling backward out of her grip. "Don't…" he gasped. "Don't try to – it's nothing. I'm all right. I'm all right."

He tried to stand up and Kit grabbed hold of his sleeve, pulling him down, forcing him to look at her finally. "You are _not_ all right," she said, a stern voice that she was relieved to hear showed none of the panic fluttering in her chest. "Tell me, Lemony. Tell me what it is."

Silence for a moment. The sound of whirring wings from high above them, but that was all. Lemony was shaking, the blood drained from his face, staring at Kit like something caught in a trap – _let me go._ When had he learned to flinch away like that? "Tell me!" she repeated, louder now, grip tightening on his arm. "What is it? What's wrong?"

His voice was so soft she had to strain to hear it. "Do we know anyone who's died of natural causes, Kit?"

"What?" She blinked, drawing back a little, relaxing her hand although she still held him firmly. "I don't know. I… don't think so…"

"Then how can it be right?" Still quiet, but stronger now, and he reached up with his other hand to grasp her wrist, holding them together. "How are we supposed to believe that it's okay, that they die and change and are happy, not just struggling all alone on some rock? How can anyone accept that?"

"I don't know." Kit shook her head, barely able to hear her own voice over the rippling of the water. "I can't explain what…"

"Oh, don't worry. I don't expect you to." The forced casualness had returned, but this time it had a harsh, brittle edge to it, as if it could break into splinters at any moment now they both knew it was fake. He wasn't raising his voice, not really, but compared to his previous hush he might have been screaming and this time it was Kit who wanted to back away and couldn't. "I just wish someone _would_. I want them to tell me a story, and I want to sit down like a good little boy and just listen and not ask any questions and make trouble. Just have them explain it all and make it make sense. I want to _understand_. I want a good reason. That's all. Just one."

"It…" She broke off, swallowed, started again. "That…"

"And of course that's not what I really want at all," Lemony continued, as if she hadn't spoken or he hadn't heard her, eyes glazed as they focused on something she couldn't see. "That's the _last_ thing I want, some neat little pat explanation. If we could sum it all up in a word, a phrase, a sentence, well, then it would be just _fine_, wouldn't it? There'd be nothing wrong at all! Nothing in the world to cry about, nothing to get upset over, people die and houses burn and families fall apart but so what? _So what_, if that's the way the world goes? It's just how things are, nothing cruel or unfair or bad about it! Just the way of the world. No use fighting it. No point looking for the truth, working yourself half to death to tell people what happened, no point in any of that except that maybe it keeps you occupied, keeps you distracted, stops you from just walking down to the beach one day and lying in the sand and waiting for the tide to come in and – "

Kit slapped him across the face. He rocked backwards, hand slipping from her wrist, eyes bright with shock and looking at her again thank goodness. The palm of her hand stung and she was panting for breath, gasping as though she'd been about to drown. "Don't… Don't _ever_…" she choked, shuddering, running her hands through her hair.

Lemony reached out to her, tentative, fingers just brushing her skirt. She grabbed his hand, pulled him close, and this time he fell into her arms without resisting. Already a vivid red blotch was spreading across his cheek. "I'm sorry," he whispered. His voice shook and she felt her shirt begin to grow damp with tears, but that was all right. Tears she could handle.

"I didn't mean to scare you," Lemony said. "I didn't mean anything. I get upset like this and I say the most awful things and I don't mean them, Kit. Not a single word, I promise. They're just – dark days. Dark moods. It's better to leave me alone and – "

"It is _not_." She lifted his head, looking him in the eyes. "That was more than just 'upset', Lemony."

He nodded. "Of course. I'm not so far gone that I can't admit it. I am – very much more than 'upset'. I meant better for _you_. You've just seen how ugly things can get – and I've been worse than that before, a lot worse – but it passes, and I get on with what I have to do. I'm not going to drag you down with me. I don't intend to hurt you any more than I already have. Don't _you_ start crying," he added, taking a handkerchief from his pocket and handing it to her.

Kit reached a decision. " 'Run away while you still can,' is that it?" she asked, dabbing at her eyes. "That line doesn't work on your readers, Lemony, and it's not going to work on me."

"But it's not fair of me to take it out on you. You don't have to…"

"Life isn't fair. I think we've established that." She kissed him on the cheek, where the bruise was forming, and held him for a while in silence. He was cold, still shaking slightly, and he clung to her waist in just the way he had as a three year old scared of things under the bed. She hoped he couldn't feel her own fear still fluttering in her like a swarm of tiny insects. Butterflies, that was the expression, but these seemed to be smaller, faster. Dragonflies, maybe.

Something was wrong with her brother. Maybe everything was wrong with him, maybe he'd never be right again and she would have to watch him be destroyed and know there was nothing she could do to save him. Her twin was murdered, her fiancée had died in this very pool, and her child was somewhere she didn't know, being raised by strangers, brought up into the very life that had left her here alone. She looked back across the pool, at the trapdoor, the entrance to what she'd once believed was their salvation. The place that held all the answers.

"Lemony?" she whispered. "It's not just you."

He looked up, brow furrowed. "I'm sorry? I didn't catch that."

"…nothing important." It wouldn't have helped. The words that came into her mind… no. Appropriate as they might have been, she couldn't say them to him.

"Do we need to get back to work now?" Lemony stood up, brushing grass off himself.

"We probably should."

"I'm sorry I disappeared like that. And I'm sorry for – you know."

Kit got up and brushed herself down too. "Don't worry about it."

They climbed back down the steps. Lemony went first, Kit standing at the top and watching as he vanished into the darkness. She sighed and followed, muttering to herself the words that she hadn't said out loud.

_We're all mad here._

_We must be, or we wouldn't have come._


End file.
